


Ave atque vale

by Tamburlaine_the_great



Series: Wear Your Tribulation Like A Rose [2]
Category: The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Giving up something no longer wanted, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:06:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28670463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamburlaine_the_great/pseuds/Tamburlaine_the_great
Summary: Returning home for his father's funeral, Patrick Merrick has time to think about what he really wants. Thankfully, Nicola Marlow appears to be of the same mind.
Relationships: Nicola Marlow/Patrick Merrick
Series: Wear Your Tribulation Like A Rose [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2101206
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Ave atque vale

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in 2011 on the _Run Away Home_ timeline, and is in the same universe as _Birds of Passage_. Patrick is thus nearly forty-seven and Nicola forty-five.

He yawned and almost wished he had stayed in London overnight rather than driving down. The moon was setting, and the lanes were dark, his long absence rendering them almost unfamiliar. The car’s headlights lit up a fox, nonchalantly crossing the road, and he slowed for it. It seemed almost odd to be driving on the left – though this road was narrow enough that he was more or less in the middle anyway. It was agreeably cool, and the rush of air from the open window was a very pleasant change from Sana’a. It had now been almost two years since he’d last been home – and he still thought of it as home, despite the empty flat in London which had been his for almost twenty years – and there were changes to be seen. Trees felled, more houses in the villages, more cars on the roads, fewer hedges as fields had expanded and different crops proliferated. To see signs only in English, pointing his way to Westbridge.

He turned off, gulped the long, straight lane towards the house, swung in at the open gate and across the cattle grid. He paused, momentarily, feet on brake and clutch, regarded the pale grey limestone of the house, gleaming faintly in the last moonlight. He’d wondered if it would feel different now that it was his, but there was only affection for its ancient, rather solid, beauty.

He parked the car on the gravel, carried his bags out and let himself in. The stone-flagged hall was almost chilly. Glancing at his watch, which proclaimed it nearly two o’clock, he decided not to look in on his mother, but went straight to his room. The bed was made, and the window open. Grateful for both, he undressed, folding his clothes neatly, prepared for bed, and fell asleep.

Consciousness of things needing to be done prodded him awake the next morning (as well as a flurry of emails from his phone, which he’d forgotten to charge). He checked those, responded to the most urgent, felt vaguely proud of himself when he found the additional electrical sockets and plugged in the phone. After he’d dressed and eaten breakfast he went upstairs again, tapped softly at the door of his mother’s room.

It opened, and there was Penny, neat and crisp in her blue tunic and trousers. She smiled and they shook hands. “How’s she doing?” he asked, quietly.

“Pretty well, today. She hasn’t taken it in, though, that Anthony’s dead. Don’t worry if she calls you by his name.”

He nodded, wrenched by loss. He sat beside the bed, regarded his mother’s thin face, her crown of white hair, the frail wasted arms. She still wore the thin gold wedding ring and the ruby on her finger that she’d been wearing for the last forty-eight years, though they were loose on her. Her hand under his was cool and frail, and it was a moment before he felt slow blood pulsing through the veins. A few moments later, the fingers clutched his with surprising strength. “Hullo, Ma,” he said, lightly. “It’s Patrick.”

“Pat,” she said, looking at him, almost smiling. Then she frowned. “Anthony?”

He wondered whether it was worth protesting. He’d always looked a little like his father, a Merrick cast of countenance stamped on their features, which his mother had not. He glanced at Penny, who shook her head briefly. He smiled, with an effort, and talked about his journey home, a little about the people he’d met through work, and it seemed like she let the sound of his voice just wash over her, taking in very little of the sense of what he was saying.

Presently, she fell asleep again, and he rose, kissed her forehead gently, and moved away. “I’d best see Hilary,” he said. “I take it my mother can’t come down?”

Penny shook her head again. “It would just distress her too much. Patrick, I think you need to prepare yourself for her to go, too. She still looks for your father, you know, but she’s faded noticeably since his death – there’s only a thin thread holding her here now.”

He rubbed his face resignedly. “Thanks.”

He found Hilary in the office, packing up files into cardboard archive boxes and periodically sitting down at the desk to answer emails. They shook hands briefly. Hilary briefed him about the funeral arrangements, commented that the chapel had been unsuitable, due to its small size, and so the service would be held at Our Lady of Sorrows in Colebridge. Everything was so well-organised, so under control, that he felt rather superfluous, even like a child again being told what to do and where to go. He leafed idly through a stack of condolence letters – he grinned wryly at seeing one from the former Prime Minister. He couldn’t imagine what Sir Anthony Merrick had in common with Blair, except their religion, but the letter conveyed a sense of respect, nevertheless, a genuine regret for his passing. Patrick wondered if it was likely that the by-election, scheduled for the following week, would return another Conservative candidate. He himself was as determinedly apolitical as possible, as befitted a good civil servant, though he was a good deal less in sympathy with his current masters than those who'd appointed him to his present post.

He retrieved his phone, and went out for a walk. The sun shone, and he could smell growing things, dust on the lanes, hear the sounds of larks twittering high above him, and jackdaws making a fuss about the usual sorts of things. It was a while since he’d last been riding and he wished there were still horses to ride. But his father had given up hunting along with the ban, and the couple who’d been in honourable retirement the last time he’d been home were conspicuously gone. So he was left with his own two feet. Once, he’d known this landscape like he’d known his own face, known every village from here to the sea. It belonged to him – or rather, he’d belonged to it. Now, though, he was just a visitor.

The Crowlands, thankfully, looked very little different. Rolling heath, gorse in bloom, the few trees loud with birds. The sky was blue and hazy, and there was a gentle sound of wind in the grass. His phone pinged at him as he moved into an area with reception, and he found a text from Nicola in response to his informing her of his arrival in the UK.

_Planning to drive down this afternoon. Why don’t I treat you to dinner in Colebridge?_

_Would love to_ , he typed back. Realised he really did. _What time suits you?_

He glanced at the time, sighed, and walked inland again to meet the farm manager at Adam’s Barrow, for discussions of the now and the future.

*

Since he was early, he left the car parked safely and went up to the priory. It was closed now for the day, but he walked around it as usual, admiring its weathered stone tower and gargoyles soft-edged with age. There were a couple of memorial benches of pale oak, so he sat down and basked in the early evening sun, watching the shadows lengthen.

The _Black Swan_ was busy when he pushed open the door and trod inside, and loud with the muffled roar of conversation. He had to stoop a little under the oak beams in the main bar. There was a brief diminution of the noise level, and the barman said, abruptly, “Jesus, I thought you were your father for a minute. What can I get you?”

“Orange juice, please,” he said, disconcerted.

He was looking around for a table when he saw Nicola come in. Because they saw each other so infrequently, it was always a shock to him, as though he had to continually reset his private memory of her. She’d had her hair cut short again, and she was wearing a sleeveless blue linen dress which reached her ankles, a chunky necklace, and an armful of gold bangles. Something clenched in his body to see them all against her tanned skin, twenty years of collecting all there on her wrist. She grinned in pleasure, kissed his cheek, let him order a pint of one of the local bitters for her, and they took their drinks outside to the yard where there were several tables set out amongst the tubs of flowers.

She downed nearly half her pint in one, saying at length, “Gosh, I needed that. It was a very hot drive down from Oxford, even with the top down.”

“Are you staying at Trennels?”

“Haven’t made it there yet, but yes, this evening. How’s home? I imagine it feels a bit different now.”

“Oddly, no,” he replied, honestly. “I think maybe I never really considered it _Dad’s_ house, but just that we were living there, the latest in a long line of Merricks occupying the place.”

She nodded, looking as though this sounded entirely reasonable to her. They talked easily, distracting them both from the reason for the meeting, always in the background. After a while, they went up to the dining room for dinner. The food was considerably more interesting now than it had been when the _Black Swan_ had been about the only place to eat as a family: Patrick had been lucky to get a table so late, and Nicola congratulated him.

“I got a cancellation,” he admitted. “Otherwise we’d have been eating fish and chips sitting on a park bench.”

“Or get some at Mulcross Bay and eat them sitting on the beach.”

“We can, if you’d rather,” he replied, willing to accommodate her preferences.

“Maybe tomorrow, now that you’ve gone to such effort. Or will you be taken up with family?”

“No, I think they’re not planning to stick around – the uncles and aunts are too elderly to stay away from home overnight and the cousins don’t want to. I’d like that. I need some time to consider what to do.”

“Haven’t you decided?”

He shook his head. “I keep getting torn. On the one hand, if I wanted to stay, I don’t think this is the first embassy I’ll have. Though I’m not particularly good at the political manoeuvring, which is partly why I’m in Yemen and not, say, Jordan.”

Nicola smiled briefly. “There’s always a pecking order. I suppose you wouldn’t want Saudi Arabia, though.” She had never mentioned to him the terror she’d felt on his behalf when he’d been posted to Afghanistan and Iraq, and the sheer, draining relief of every text which proclaimed his continued survival.

“God, no. There’s a limit to what I can tolerate in the name of diplomacy and Saudi’s way over the edge of it.” He swirled his drink, making the melting ice cubes rattle. “But I do feel the tug of duty and home, too, so...” His voice trailed off. “I have envied you a lot for being one of several children.”

“Shared responsibility, you mean? Yes, I see that. Being in charge of grants and students is not quite the same – there’s always a structure which surrounds.”

They whiled away their starters by talking of work. He was one of the few people outside the confines of academia who understood what she did – not in a technical way, since he knew nothing about metallurgy, but an administrative way – and the frustrations of dealing with people and systems supposedly designed to facilitate work, but which more often seemed to hinder it.

The arrival of the waitress to clear their plates brought a break in the conversation. Nicola ordered a soft drink and he another orange juice. “Did you know,” she said, an edge in her voice that was not meant for him, “that Gin and Stephen are separated? Gin’s at home, alternately raging and weeping. Twenty years they’d been married, and he’s fucked off with some dressage rider half his age. Makes me glad I never did it myself.”

“What, dressage?” he replied, disingenuously, and with a lifted eyebrow.

She grinned. “That too.” She stared at the lemon slice in her drink. “It’s just that – well, it’s obviously just sex. How can you throw away something you’ve built for so long just for that?”

“There’s the illusion of recapturing one’s youth,” he suggested, “or sloughing off responsibility. But I don’t suppose those things last long unless you’re wealthy enough not to worry about the next paycheque. It’s not something I can imagine doing myself, were I married. And to be honest I can barely even imagine _that_. Not now.”

“Why not? Just because of attaining your great age and years of wisdom?” she asked, a mischievous expression on her face.

“Age, yes, wisdom, maybe not.” He grimaced, wryly. “I think I’ve lived alone for too long. You must feel this yourself, I’d imagine.”

“Mostly. Occasionally I do feel the need for companionship which isn’t just sitting at the pub with a friend or two, nursing a pint and putting the world to rights.” She shrugged. “Then I call Miranda or text you, mostly.”

Suddenly touched, he reached out across the table and laced his fingers in hers, and felt his heart clench when she turned her hand and stroked his palm. Words seemed clotted in his throat. He wanted to let her know how much her friendship had meant to him – still meant to him – but all the words seemed to be just disguises. By now, surely, they were long past the time of using speech to divert?

The sun was setting when they left the hotel, but the air was still so warm and he did not want to let her go, that he suggested they drive down to Mulcross Bay in any case. To his relief she agreed eagerly. He drove, being most familiar with the roads and because, if it came down to it, his Land Rover would be more able to cope with ruts and mud than her ancient MG. The sky was still light when they stopped and he parked, and they wandered down the footpath and onto the beach. There were still a few people around, packing up after a day on the sands, or walking dogs, but they were generally heading back to the car park or the guest houses.

Nicola and Patrick removed their shoes and walked along the hard sand, paddled in the sea, which was only just starting to warm up. There were a few thin clouds near the horizon which glowed gold and rose, incandescent against the pearly sky, and cast a deep pink light on the cliffs in front of them. Had the tide been on the ebb, Nicola might have suggested they make their way around the headland, and maybe look at Bacca Cave after so long avoiding it, but it was clear the tide was advancing, and soon all of the rock at the base of the cliff would be covered. They were alone now, except for gulls wheeling around the cliffs and screaming, and dipping flights of sand martins swooping up to their burrows. Patrick stood ankle-deep in the water, watching the birds, when just too much sand was scoured from beneath his feet by the wash, and, turning to avoid the next wave, found himself overbalancing into it. He sat up, shook his head wildly like a dog so that water flew, and grinned at Nicola who was frankly laughing at him. “God, I am soaked,” he said, obviously, reaching gratefully for her outstretched hand and appreciating her assistance in getting to his feet. He removed his shirt and wrung it out, and put it back on, unaware of her interested glances at his bare chest and back.

“Going to do that with your trousers as well?” she asked.

She was very obviously admiring now, and he flushed. Now self-conscious, he stripped off linen trousers, wrung what seemed like several pints of seawater from them. “No, I am _not_ going to take my underpants off for your amusement.”

“It’s not amusement, precisely, Patrick,” she said, and kissed him. Patrick put his arms round her, felt her arms holding him tightly, and did not care in the least that they were both getting wet. He slid one hand into her hair and caressed fondly. They had kissed before, occasionally, but not like this: it felt different now. Nicola was on her tiptoes and kissing him deeply, holding him as if she never wanted to let him go. He responded ardently, kissing her mouth and throat and eyelids, and the soft skin beneath her ear and inhaling the clean sharp smell of her. Her hand dug into his thick hair, and he had honestly not realised how much that would affect him: he sighed, shakily.

They stopped kissing, but she still held him, closely; he, happy to be held, returned the gesture, stroked her hair. “I miss you,” she said, almost too quietly to be heard.

They retreated further up the beach to looser sand beyond the high water mark, and he put his trousers back on rather than continue to wave them as a banner. They sat down, legs outstretched towards the sea, shoulders together, hands conjoined, watched the evening glow fade beyond the other headland. They kissed again, without planning it, until he was flat on his back on the sand and Nicola was crouched over him. “I mean this,” she said, abruptly, looking at him earnestly, staring into those golden eyes. “Consture my meaning, wrest not my method... This is serious.”

“Speech is but blasting,” he murmured against her lips, and kissed her again.

“Mmm, you taste of salt,” she said. There was a note in her voice that he had never heard in it before, and it sent a wholly unaccustomed pang of longing through him. Since Oxford he’d been so rarely tempted by physical desire that he’d assumed, with rather a sense of relief, that it didn’t interest him. Evidently, with the right person, he was _extremely_ interested.

“Do you want to come home with me?” he asked, tentatively. “I mean, you’ve seen my bedroom, and how big my bed isn’t, so if you’d rather not...”

Nicola grinned, wryly. “I think we can cope. Besides, there’s no law which says we actually _have_ to use the bed.”

Something like a groan escaped his lips. They kissed, and then headed back across the sands, hand in hand, striding now, in a desperate rush. Of course, since Nicola had left her car in Colebridge, they had to go there to retrieve it, and then drive back again to Mariot Chase. But she was still there with him, she hadn’t decided to just go on to Trennels, and once in his bedroom he stripped off his horrible damp clothes and the expression on her face possibly mirrored his when she slipped off her dress. Being the practical sort she was, she retrieved condoms from her bag and asked him to wear one.

He thought, but did not say, because he’d learned tact in nearly twenty-five years of diplomacy, that if one was going to sin in full knowledge it was far better not to compound it by a mealy-mouthed eschewing of contraception. So he nodded, and she made it part of their exploration when she put it on him. Nicola was more experienced with fornication than he was, thankfully, so he followed her example, discovering her body as she was his, and enjoying every inch of it.

It was quite a surprisingly long time later that they ended up in the bed, amusedly sharing its narrow width, her warm back against his chest and her head on his arm. He couldn’t stop touching her, stroking his fingers gently down her arm, his palm down her hip and thigh, even though, one would have thought, that there was no more skin to touch or to kiss.

“That was lovely, Patrick,” she said, turning her head to kiss him. “Thank-you.”

“I should thank _you_ , I think,” he replied, returning the kiss. He leaned over her and switched off the light.

*

He and Nicola took advantage of a certain morning readiness, before she tore herself away, dressed and drove off to Trennels. He could hear the roar of the engine and spurt of gravel even from his open window, and hoped his mother hadn’t been disturbed out of what passed for her sleep nowadays.

He washed and shaved carefully, put on his black suit and tie, went to sit with his mother. She was so far away, he thought, her soul had already gone forth upon its journey towards God. They’d had a prickly relationship when he’d been a child, he never seeming to be interested in the right things or saying the things he should, and she perennially disappointed in him. It had always been his father he’d been closest to, and the pain of that loss kept catching him unexpectedly. But over the last few years, and before his mother’s sharp decline, they’d become closer. He’d mourn her death sincerely as he’d thought twenty years ago he would not.

He held her hand between his, talked about his dinner with Nicola, their trip to the coast, made an amusing story of his accidental ducking, and she seemed not to hear. At length, he got up and kissed her forehead, said, “I love you, Ma,” and slipped out of the room.

To his inexpressible joy, Nicola was waiting with some others of her family at the church. After they’d kissed, he had leisure to notice that she’d come with Peter, Ginty, and their parents. Both Geoff and Pam – and it was quite an effort to think of them by their first names – looked in good health, and they shook hands and uttered sincere condolences for his loss. He thanked them for coming. He was not too distracted to notice that Ginty looked chic and immaculately dressed, and younger than Nicola, with her sleek blonde hair and perfect complexion. But Nicola was real and wonderful, her skin creased by laughter and frowns, silver threads in the bronze of her hair, and her hand in his was an anchor, the jesses of his heart’s falcon.

The other Marlows sat down in a pew. Nicola stuck by his side as he greeted mourners and shook an endless series of hands. He’d not realised before what a relief it would be to have her there, a silent support. The church filled.

It was not the old rite which his father had gone on stubbornly preferring to the new, but it was quiet and almost soothing in its ritual. He’d made it through the reading, just, though his voice had cracked noticeably in the last sentence. Colonel Lidgett, who’d known his father since boyhood, gave a eulogy. It was not long, nor as smoothly delivered as Her Majesty’s Prime Minister, who was listening, would have done, but Patrick was not the only mourner wiping his eyes by the end of it. There was one hymn, _Be still my soul_ , which completely wrecked him; he stood unmoving, Nicola singing beside him, until it ended and he could mop up expeditiously. The pall-bearers took the coffin out to the waiting hearse, which would return to the chapel for the interment, and he found himself trying to find words to speak to Uncle Alex, and Aunt Florence in her wheelchair, and Aunt Ursula crying easy tears.

He made a point to thank Hilary for his hard work: they’d never got on particularly well, but Patrick had to acknowledge he’d never been anything but a loyal and efficient assistant to his father.

Since the wake was also held in Colebridge, so as to avoid the disturbance it would have caused at the Chase, Patrick and the family did not stay long. “Do you want me to come?” Nicola asked tentatively.

“Yes, please,” he said.

So they crowded into the chapel with its gilt and carving, and the sun streaming through the stained glass painted the stone floor with a rainbow pavement of colour: family, estate workers, Hilary, the priest saying time-honoured words in the Latin of his choice as Anthony Merrick was laid to rest. _In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere aeternam habeas requiem_.

*

It was late afternoon before everyone had gone, with last words and tears and embraces. Patrick and Nicola wandered to the walled garden, sat on a curved stone seat blotched with yellow and white lichen, and finally relaxed in the gently moving shade of the overhanging poplar trees. He was just the right height for her to rest her head on his shoulder and feel his arm around her.

“Nick,” he said, at last, breaking the comfortable silence.

“Mm?” she replied, sleepily.

“Do you think you could possibly bear to marry me?”

Startled, she twisted out of his embrace and stared at him. He did not look as though he were joking. “I thought you were staying with the FCO. Because I can’t come with you, you know: I won’t give up my work.”

He reached for her hand and clasped it, sliding his fingers between hers. “I know. I wouldn’t want you to. I’ve decided to resign, and come back here and run the place. We could live here and in Oxford, travel back at weekends. What do you think?”

Her thoughts tumbled and she tried to marshal them. “You know – I’m too old for children, even if I wanted them. But I wouldn’t want a sexless marriage, either, if you feel it’s only for procreation.”

“I wouldn’t, either.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her palm tenderly, and a shiver of pleasure went through her. “Look, Nick, I’ve known for years I was unlikely to have kids. Until yesterday I didn’t see marriage for me, either. But I love you so much. I feel as though – well, as though I’ve needed this long to make me into the man you deserve.”

Moved by that, she kissed him softly. “I love you, too.” She stroked his face, let her fingers comb into the silver-flecked black hair, watched his expression soften. “I think I would like that a lot.”

He returned the kiss and they embraced closely for some time. The stable clock struck, and Nicola emerged from trailing clouds of joy to check her watch. She sighed. “I really should go. I have to give a tutorial tomorrow morning.”

He nodded. They got up and stretched, and went back into the house through the kitchen garden, then through the hall and on the gravelled drive. Nicola lowered the roof of her car and dumped her bag on the passenger seat, then settled herself in her own seat. They embraced again hastily, and she drove off. A complicated mixture of emotions was swirling within her, but all she was conscious of, as she drove north, and her mercury rose higher and higher, was joy and exhilaration. Despite the noise, and the hot buffeting air, and the burning sun, she sang to herself all that she could never express.


End file.
